ing wall, in some parts 57 feet thick, with its
towers and galleries and chambers constructed in the thickness of
the wall (Plate V. 1). The palace revealed evidences of considerable
skill in the decorative arts. A beautiful frieze of alabaster carved
in rosettes and palmettes, inlaid with blue paste, made plain what
Homer meant when he wrote of the Palace of Alcinous: 'Brazen were
the walls which ran this way and that from the threshold to the
inmost chamber, and round them was a frieze of blue' (_kuanos_);
while fresco paintings in several of the rooms exhibited the spiral
and rosette decoration of Orchomenos and Egypt. But perhaps the
most interesting find was the remains of a great wall-painting in
which a mighty bull is represented charging at full speed, while
an athlete, clinging to the monster's horn with one hand, vaults
over his back--a picture which is the first important example of
the now well-known and numerous set of similar representations
which have given us a clue to something of the meaning of the old
legend of the man-destroying Minotaur and his tribute of human
victims.

Schliemann's discoveries, notwithstanding all the incredulity aroused
by his sometimes rather headlong enthusiasm, created an extraordinary
amount of interest among scholars and students of early European
culture. It was felt at once that he had brought the world face to
face with facts which must profoundly modify all opinions hitherto
held as to the origins of Greek civilization; for the advanced and
fully ripened art which was disclosed, especially in the wonderful
finds from the Shaft- or Circle-Graves, stood on an entirely different
plane from any art which had hitherto been associated with the
early age of Greece; and it was evident, not only that the date
at which civilization began to reveal itself in Hellas must be
pushed back several centuries, but also that the great differences
between the mature Mycenaean art and the infant art of Greece required
explanation. To the discoverer himself, the supreme interest of his
finds always lay in the thought that they were the direct prototypes,
if not the actual originals, of the civilization described in the
Homeric poems; but to the question whether this was so or not, a
question interesting in itself, but largely academic, there succeeded
a much more important one. Here was proof of the existence of a
civilization, obviously great and long-enduring, whose products
could not be